Twins

Many of you might not know Ronnie. He, like me worked out of Ardler sub and could be found generally in the 37 panda. Normal response to any radio call!..... 37 from the Kingsway. In actual fact, most of the time he was safely ensconced in the box (station) in readiness for whatever the control room operators threw at him. It wasn't the first time that they would shout his callsign and ask where he was. Normally the answer was truthful, but misleading insofar as he replied Iona Street. The reason this confused the control room staff was that none of them knew of an Iona Street in Dundee and it certainly didn't show up on any maps they had. What they didn't know was that whilst the postal address of the box was now referred to all and sundry as Turnberry Ave, it lay adjacent to an un-named footpath where Iona Street used to be long before any of us were a twinkle in the proverbial eye. So there you have it. Honest, yet at the same time confusing.

Now, to the unsuspecting public, (a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat that wasn't there)  Ronnie and I could be mistaken for brothers. There was a passing resemblance. We were both adult males. We were both caucasian. We both smoked. We both had a bizarre sense of humour. That was where the similarity finished. He was taller, I was skinnier. He was more glaikit, I was the handsome refined runt. He had sticky out ears, I had not a lot going for me. He was a year older. I was the right age. But to some, if not all, of the adolescent rapscallions that plagued the neighbourhood we were thought to be not only brothers - but twins. Oh what fun that created. The fact that we were known as the Chuckle Brothers helped to foster the myth.

I'm not suggesting that all adolescent rapscallions are as bright as three in the morning, but........ Okay I am. They are as thick as two short planks and about just as useful. To be honest, I wouldn't trust any of them to sit the right way on a toilet. How they ever thought they would become the next criminal mastermind beat me.  When they asked (and they frequently did) if we were twins, the answer was always.... Yes, but he's a year older. No accompanying laughter from us, no sneaky chuckles, just a straight face and move on. I couldn't believe they fell for it, but fell for it they did. Hook, line and sinker.

Over the next few years as new gang members abandoned their prams for a life of crime, they too would ask the same question - only to be told by their peers that yes it was true, we were twins, but the one with the tall one with the sticky out ears was a year older.